Libertarian economic philosophy is killing us:
http://globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=16639
parsy, who thinks we need to reinvent America
“the quality of products and services delivered by American companies had been outstripped by foreign competitors.”
Why do you think this is so? Could it have something to do with the fact that there were no incentives to improve the quality? Look at Detroit. Why is it that Detroit did so poorly for so many years, and let the Japanese automakers eat their lunch? Because they had inefficient, high-cost workers, they had terrible, unresponsive management and they committed the cardinal sin of the free market, by failing to deliver what their customers wanted.
The world of global competition is a reality. If the American worker is unwilling to adapt to the new reality, than he will be left behind. We can attempt to shutter ourselves behind the wall of tariffs, but what will that acheive?
I’m going to tell you a story, that has to do with an industry near and dear to my heart, the forestry industry. Up here, Forestry is one of the cash-cows of the governments, such that they charge high prices and taxes. Now, due to economic downturns, it has forced the remaining producers to become the most productive in the entire world.
My father worked with an engineering firm to do upgrades of these mills. They often received business from american firms as well. Now, their stated policy was to provide high quality services to Canadian firms, and less high quality services to American firms. Why? Because the American mills were 20 years behind ours. They would be satisfied with the incremental improvments, and they were unaware as to what their true competition has acheived.
America has massive lumber tariffs on our wood. The only thing this has achieved is to make our producers compete not only with your local businesses, but with a handicap of the tariff. This has forced them to become even more efficient in order to be competitive.
The end result is that the American mills have been left behind. If you are an American mill owner, the answer isn’t to hide behind a tariff, but it is to come up here and see for yourself, why we are eating your lunch.